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Investigating How Film Lighting Techniques Influence Viewers’ Emotional Arousal, Emotional Valence and State Empathy

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Investigating How Film Lighting Techniques Influence Viewers’ Emotional Arousal, Emotional Valence and State Empathy Investigating How Film Lighting Techniques Influence Viewers’ Emotional Arousal, Emotional Valence and State Empathy Yunting Huang Snr 2001810 Anr u113703 Master’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Track New Media Design School of Humanities and Digital Sciences Tilburg University, Tilburg Supervisor: dr. K.E. Balint Second reader: dr. A. Kallergi July 2018 FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 2 Abstract The present study explores the relationship between film lighting techniques and viewer’s emotional responses. The main focus was to investigate whether viewer’s emotional arousal, emotional valence and their state empathy would increase with higher levels of low-key lighting. Low-key lighting indicates the shadow areas in the film scenes. Higher level represents a higher contrast between the light and shadow areas. A within-subject experiment (N = 75) composed of 15 short film clips from three different genres (action, drama and romance) was designed to examine the effect. Participants were video recorded and their facial emotions during film watching were analysed by FaceReader. A state empathy scale (Shen, 2010) consisting of 12 questions was collected after each film clip. Results showed that viewers were more aroused, and produced more negative emotions when there were higher shadow proportions in the scenes for the drama and romance genres. For the action genre, results indicated the opposite effect, viewer’s arousal and valence decreased with larger shadow areas. Moreover, contrary to the hypothesis, viewers did not empathize more with the film characters with higher levels of low-key film lighting. Both state empathy and associative empathy decreased with higher contrast of light and dark areas in the scenes. No relationship was found between low-key lighting, affective empathy, and cognitive empathy. Together the findings suggest that low-key lighting does not always predict higher emotional responses. Viewer’s emotions and empathy were also influenced by film genres, the content, and individual differences. Keywords: film study, film formal features, film lighting, emotional arousal, emotional valence, state empathy, affective empathy, cognitive empathy, associative empathy FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 3 Table of Content Introduction 4 Theoretical Framework 7 LC4MP Light and Film lighting Emotions State Empathy Film formal features, film lighting with Emotions and Empathy Research question and hypotheses Methods 21 Participants Design Stimulus material Measures Procedure Data collection method Data analysis plan Results 29 Hypothesis 1 & 2 Hypothesis 3, 3a, 3b, 3c Discussion 40 Film lighting, Emotional arousal and Emotional valence Film lighting and State Empathy Implications for New Media Design Limitations and Future research Conclusion 50 Reference 51 Appendix A: consent form 61 Appendix B: survey outline 63 Appendix C: stimulus material 68 FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 4 Investigate how film lighting techniques influence viewer’s emotional arousal, emotional valence and state empathy Film watching is a good way to experience different emotions within a short period of time (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 2016). The emotional experiences that films offer to viewers is one of the major incentives from watching films (Tan, 2011). Besides the content of the film, its form and presentation also contribute to shifting and turning of viewer’s emotional responses (Detenber & Lang, 2010). Content refers to the story, narratives, characters, and plot, while form and presentation are about how the content is presented to the viewers (Detenber & Lang, 2010; Geiger & Reeves, 1993). Additionally, both formal features and presentation features in the film can enhance the film watching experience. Formal features are the ones under the control of the producer and cannot be changed by the viewers (Detenber & Lang, 2010). Presentation features on the other hand, such as screen size, volume and viewing distance can be adjusted by the viewers (Detenber & Lang, 2010). Although both formal and presentation features are both interesting subjects related to viewer’s emotional responses for films, the focus of this paper will be about the impact of film’s formal features on viewer’s emotional responses. Film formal features enable viewers to follow, understand the story, and to identify film structures (Brunick, Cutting，& DeLong, 2013). More importantly, film formal features influence viewer’s attention, cognitive and emotional responses (Detenber & Lang, 2010; Lang, 2000). These formal features include colour, motion, lighting, editing pace, shots, etc. (Tarvainen, Westman, & Oittinen, 2015). Viewer’s emotional responses such as reported arousal and valence are influenced by the formal features such as camera angle, motions, shot scales, brightness and colour (Cummins, Keene, & Nutting, 2012; Detenber & Lang, 2010; Tarvainen, Westman, & Oittinen, 2015). FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 5 Film formal features can also have an impact on viewer’s emotional engagement with the characters. Emotional engagement refers to viewer’s emotions towards the characters, in which they feel the character’s emotions (empathy), and feel for them (sympathy) (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009). In film watching, viewer’s empathic engagement is crucial for understanding characters (Vaage, 2010). Previous research indicated that viewers’ emotional engagement increased with larger faces of the characters (Balint, Svanera, Schoft, Benini, & Rooney, submitted for publication). Viewer’s empathy level also increases with the level of understanding and processing of the films (Lang, 2000). Film formal features such as camera perspectives, shot scales, and music all contribute to empathizing with the characters (Boero & Bottoni, 2008; Wang & Cheong, 2006; Vaage, 2010). Therefore, the importance of understanding how viewers empathize with the film characters should not be neglected. Lighting is fundamental to the aesthetics of television programs and films (Zettl, 2011). Lighting in media and visual designs can affect the feelings, perceptions and emotions of audiences directly, dramatic effects in films heavily rely on lighting (Grodal, 2007; Zettl, 2011). Previous research found that changes in the luminance in film scenes has a noticeable impact on viewer’s film watching experience (Brunick, Cutting, & DeLong, 2013). Luminance is a measurement of how much light is present in an image (Brunick, Cutting, & DeLong, 2013). It is not precisely the same as lighting. Lighting is defined as the manipulation of the light and shadow areas on the screen, and is an important formal feature in films (Zettl, 2011). Film lighting is essential for audiences to see actions, build emotions, and guide attentions (Shafiee & Bidin, 2016). There are many lighting techniques in films to establish different scenes, characters and even film genres (Ramaeker, 2014; Zettl, 2011). For instance, high-key lighting and low-key lighting (Wang & Cheong, 2006). Previous research on film lighting showed that it can enhance the plot, set a mood or create an atmosphere for FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 6 the viewers (Poland, 2015; Shafiee & Bidin, 2016). Hence, the relationship between film lighting and viewer’s emotional responses is an interesting topic to be further explored. Although there is a growing body of research focusing on different film formal features and the impact on emotional responses and viewer’s empathy level, there are only limited research on film lighting techniques. Therefore, the connections between film lighting with viewer’s emotional responses will be further investigated in the present study. This paper will attempt to answer the following research question: how do different film lighting techniques impact audience’s emotional arousal, emotional valence, and empathy? FILM LIGHTING TECHNIQUES INFLUENCE VIEWER’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSES 7 Theoretical Framework Films and psychology have helped each other in many ways in the past century, as both videos and films are still being widely used in the studies of perception and emotions (Tan, 2011). Narrative information in films are structured in a certain way by the filmmakers to attract viewer’s attention and influence their cognitive and emotional responses (Bordwell, 1985). A good film can lead to many complex emotions: comedies are not only happy, thrillers are not just about anxious feelings, and tragedies are not limited to sadness (Johnson- Laird & Oatley, 2016). Moreover, in a good film, viewers feel empathy and sympathy with the film characters as well (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Tan, 2011). Thus, it is interesting to see how emotions and films are tightly related to each other. In order to understand the relationship between film lighting and viewer’s emotions, the use of film formal features will first be discussed, which will be followed by the concept of film lighting. Then, the concepts of emotions such as emotional arousal, emotional valence will be clarified, as well as empathy. Lastly, the relationship between film formal features and emotions, including film lighting and viewer’s emotions and empathy will be further discussed. LC4MP According to the Limited Capacity for Mediated Processing (LC4MP) model (Lang, 2000), video messages consist of both structural information and content. Structural information, also known as formal features, influence viewer’s
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